From Bad to Worse

There was a major development today at the UN Barcelona Climate Change Talks on land use, land-use change and forestry: developed countries are being invited to bring whatever reference level they like to Copenhagen for consideration.

This is a major failing of the process and of the developed countries that should have been showing leadership. The current draft rules for setting reference levels include several loopholes tailored to the national circumstances of many developed countries and designed to allow the hiding of emissions.

Rather than fixing the text, the UN process has now invited the same Parties to use any of these loopholes they like. As a result, we will have to try to win environmental integrity through a dissection and fight over the reference levels of over 30 countries.

Unless things change quickly tomorrow, our hopes for a system with environmental integrity will lie in a staggering analytical capacity, hard campaigning, and deft negotiating from developing countries to push the genie back into the bottle in Copenhagen after seeing the numbers and strike a deal for a system with integrity.

This is what happens when you stick people in a corner to talk to themselves

I was having a conversation today with an industrialized country delegate who was apologizing for not being a forester and therefore not really getting all of the intricacies and complexities and rationales of forest management carbon accounting.

I replied, "So, if you're not a forester, doesn't it seem strange to you that the rules have to be designed to ensure there is no negative impact on the forest sector for cutting trees? Why should the forest sector be the only one who should choose whether or not to reduce emissions rather than be forced to?"

The answer was telling and was something that I have often lamented: it's a structural problem resulting from the special status that this sector has - from the beginning it was an add-on with its own set of rules. What that has meant in practice is most decision-makers don't get it or try to, so it is delegated to the technical experts. What do you expect to happen when you ask a bunch of foresters to come up with rules for the forest sector? Or as this person put it, "If you stick a bunch of people in the corner of the room to talk to each other they will come up with funny ideas."

The ideas in this case are shameful: a set of draft rules that openly excuses all responsibility for emissions. Of all other sectors in this process we are demanding transformative change. In the forest sector we are demanding nothing. In fact we are doing worse than this - we are telling countries that if they like they can make things worse.

We are demanding emission reductions of 40% or more from industrialized countries. What are we demanding of the forest sectors in these countries? At most we are asking them to continue business-as-usual. If they do better we give them credits.

The only hope at this point is that developing countries negotiate hard on this. They are currently asking for the same thing we are: accountability for changes in emissions from 1990. I'm hoping we will see a new statement from them in the next couple of days.

Which loophole is the smallest?

It was a discouraging first day for me at the UN Barcelona Climate Change Talks (it was only one day - it already feels like a week!?).

I spent the day with pledges in the inside pocket of my suit, ever ready to take the name and signature of a country representative that was ready to commit to making forests count: agree that we should account for actual changes in emissions resulting from logging. Coming across people willing to commit to this idea was the exception, finding people to explain their preferred method for avoiding this full accounting was the norm.

I contributed to an article (LULUCF Follies)in the Climate Action Network's daily newsletter, ECO, describing the cancer that is taking over the negotiations; here's an excerpt: "It’s a little hard to believe, but the positions taken by many Annex 1 negotiators [industrialized countries] effectively define their preferred management choices as carbon-neutral, regardless of what emissions actually are. In this fantasy world, you incur no debits for a ‘business-as-usual’ policy of cutting forests at age 50 even if most of the national forest estate is now 49 years old and you’re about to cut it all down. Nor do you receive debits for stepping up forest harvest to produce bioenergy. But the atmosphere sees increased emissions from both these changes!”

I'm not sure what is more troubling: the number of these alarming proposals or the number of people that don't seem alarmed by them. One negotiator observed that this is perfectly okay as long as you set the national emission reduction target with the knowledge that you are excluding these emissions. Another hopefully offered that I should consider which of the many proposed loopholes being brought forward is the smallest, and side with that one.

With champions from industrialized countries increasingly hard to find, could it be that the developing world could save the day here? They are now engaging in negotiations and presenting a concern for environmental integrity and there is certainly a limit to their patience for the indulgences of industrialized countries. But where will that limit be found? It seems likely that a Barcelona outcome will be the presentation of a choice to be made in Copenhagen at the political level.

...that is if there is an outcome from Barcelona on forests: today's talks were cancelled because the Africa Group has apparently said that it would boycott all further sessions until progress is made on an emission reduction target for industrialized countries.

EU Solidifying Role as Bad Guy in UN Forest Climate Talks

For those of us trying to make sure countries have to account for emissions from cutting forests in the Copenhagen climate agreement, the European Union has been the cause of quite a bit of concern and consternation over the past year. There is a split between those countries who think any change in emissions should be counted for (e.g. France, Germany, U.K.) and those that don't (e.g. Finland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, Austria). Thus, the EU has been divided and unable to take a strong position.

Earlier this week the EU Council met to define its position for the Copenhagen Climate Talks. Bad news. Those hoping that the EU could still be a progressive voice on this issue have to redouble their efforts. The EU has decided it must be conscious that some countries may need flexibility in determining the baseline against which emissions in the commitment period will be determined - translation: the EU is opening the door for countries who want to increase their emissions but erase them from the books through creative accounting.

The offending text is pasted below:
33. RECOGNIZES that future accounting rules for forest management should provide an adequate balance between further incentives for sequestration, for use of wood products and for biomass energy; STRESSES the need for future accounting rules to secure that the environmental integrity of a Copenhagen agreement is preserved; ACKNOWLEDGES that there are still difficulties associated with methodologies for measuring and predicting LULUCF GHG flows with a high degree of accuracy; WELCOMES further discussions with other Parties on accounting rules for forest management where the EU is open to discuss schemes based on the use of a reference level (bar), which includes an environmentally robust interval (band) while being CONSCIOUS that national circumstances, such as age class legacy effects, may require some flexibility for countries regarding the choice of reference level including allowing for historic data or robust and transparent projections open to independent review and verification; the use of gross-net accounting with a discount could also be considered in these discussions; CONSIDERS that accounting rules need to deal with emissions and removals associated with extreme events (force majeure) to reduce the risk that Parties cannot comply with their mitigation objectives because of such events. CONSIDERS that subject to such flexibility being provided for, accounting for forest management should become mandatory for all Parties taking on quantified commitments in a Copenhagen agreement.

New Draft Rules on Forestry and Land Use

A new draft text on rules for accounting for emissions from forestry and land use has come out of the Bangkok Climate Change Talks. The changes in the text are mostly the result of work that has been done between developed countries on the rule changes they want to see.

It's not pretty.

On the main issue of how to measure performance, the text is still overflowing with the pet loopholes of each country, engineered to erase any emissions that the atmosphere sees from logging.

It appears that there are special LULUCF glasses that negotiators wear to make this distorted stuff seem reasonable. Here is an example of the kind of things you hear in the hallways to rationalize it:

• But if we account for the emissions from logging, there will be no incentive for bioenergy (because countries like to falsely assume that it is carbon neutral);
• We shouldn't account for emissions from logging because we do sustainable forest management (and that's relevant how?)!;
• We can't account for changes in emissions because we plan on increasing logging levels!;\

There are a couple of other significant changes to the text:

• Developed countries have mostly agreed how they would account for carbon stored in wood products. I've never felt this was a good idea, but the text does have some reasonable safeguards in it - but not yet good enough!
• Australia, the EU and Canada have come up with a combined proposal for how to remove emissions from fires and other natural disturbances from the accounts. They are still in disagreement about whether to exclude all emissions or only the biggest, extraordinary events -- significantly there is still a huge loophole in this idea: there is no accountability for countries if they salvage log these areas - a significant extra source of emissions!

A number of countries have said that they want the rules settled by Barcelona (the meeting in November) so their implications on country emission reduction targets can be clear in time for the final deal in Copenhagen. I hope they get their wish.

China and the Group of 77 Developing Countries Draw a Line in the Sand

The doors opened up today on the forestry and land use negotiations at the Bangkok Climate Change Talks! For the first time at this conference, observers were able to hear the positions of delegates and for the first time this week we heard the position from China and the Group of 77 Developing Countries.

After nearly two years of developed countries discussing different options for rule changes for this sector, and not getting much farther than more clearly articulating the options that suit each country best, G77 and China said enough is enough and drew a line in the sand:

• Negotiations on this must be done by Barcelona (the next session in November);
• All accounting should be mandatory;
• All developed countries should use the same simple rules to account for forest; management: compare emissions in the commitment period with emissions in 1990;
• Put a cap on credits from the entire sector (cropland management, grazing land management, revegetation, forest management, afforestation, reforestation, deforestation);

Developing countries sent the signal that they are through listening to specific proposals for adjustments to meet the circumstances of each country so they can generate credits from this sector, and I think it's the perfect time for this message.

If I were to change the proposal I'd say that a base period could be used, rather than a hard base year that could create strange and unfair results due to the annual variability in the forest management sector. I'd also try to do something to fix the problem of extraordinary natural disturbances that create a compliance risk for countries. But all in all, this statement was exactly what the negotiations needed!

You can check out my live tweets as the meeting unfolded by following biocarbonman on twitter!

Storm brewing in forestry and land use negotiations

We've been getting little peeks and rumours about the revised draft text on Land use, land-use change and forestry that developed countries are working on. It may come out tomorrow or maybe Thursday. Sounds like developed countries have figured out amongst themselves how they want to account for wood stored in harvested wood products and are making progress on how to remove the effects of big natural disturbances like fires from the forest carbon accounts.

The biggest and most troubling news is that they are compiling a new option on how to account for changes in forest management emissions. From what I hear it sounds like all the loopholes any country could want cooked up into a couple of paragraphs. It will be interesting to see how China and other developing countries respond to this game.

You can read an article I wrote about one of these loopholes in Climate Action Network's ECO Newsletter yesterday; it's called Show Us the Emissions!

You can also watch today's media conference by CAN. From 10:10 - 15:50, Jeff Fiedler of The Nature Conservancy talks about this issue as well.